THE IMPORTANCE OF RETURNED MARTIAN SAMPLES FOR CONSTRAINING POTENTIAL HAZARDS TO FUTURE HUMAN EXPLORATON.

Abstract

Mars has been the target for future human exploration for decades. However, even after the successes of the orbital, lander, and rover missions, there are still an array of unknowns that pose potential physical, chemical, and biological hazards to human health from the martian environment. Mars sample return represents a vital next step in understanding these hazards and mitigating the risks to both the explorers and the inhabitants of Earth. Mars 2020 is a first step in a potential multipart Mars Sample Return Campaign. The regolith and drill core samples collected and cached during this phase can later be returned to Earth for thorough analysis. One of the key objectives of such a mission includes contributing to the preparation for human exploration of Mars, which includes constraining the nature of potential hazards [1]. The two main human health risk categories that drive the necessity for returned samples are engineering and biological/toxicological [2]. The engineering risks pertain to the terrain morphology of the landing operation zones (e.g. safe landing and human/rover locomotion) as well as possible mechanical failures due to environmental stressors. The biological and toxicological risks are broader in that they concern the health of both the explorers and life on Earth (e.g. backcontamination). Given the complexity of the hazards, the following sub-objectives were created. The foundation of each sub-objective is a thorough examination of the returned sample’s physical features (e.g. grain size, shape) and bulk composition including: inorganic (e.g. bulk chemistry, mineralogy), organic, and biological. This is a provisional report from the iMOST Human Health Hazard Objective sub-team identifying key samples and techniques needed to understand the human hazards of martian surface exploration and possible ways to mitigate these risks.